France
has a
bureaucracy just like every other country but their rules were just
enough different from the US to keep us in constant worry that
something could go
terribly wrong: We needed a visa to stay more than three months;
The visa required us to chase down every possible scrap of paperwork
that could verify that we were not going
to be a burden to their state; We had to answer yet more
specifics
about what each family member would be doing during our stay;
Could we prove that
we were really married? Were our children really our own? Did
anyone, including our four-year-old, have a criminal record....
We
wanted the kids to
attend a French school so that they could really experience France (and
learn to speak the language fluently) so
we had to deal with the French public school system: Had the children
been given all their vaccines? Were they healthy? Could we provide
identity papers and photos? The local "Prefet" also got to chime
in because our length of stay required a "Cart
de Sejour"
which seems to be sort of a "green card" for people staying for more
than the maximum (3 months) allowed for tourists. Oh, and it
would be nice
to
have local finances rather than trying to write checks on a bank
thousands of miles away or carry wads of cash all the time. All
this required many trips to the French Consulate two hours away, many
telephone calls, emails and faxes and a tremendous burden on my in-laws
for which I am very grateful. Once we arrived in France we knew that there would be still be a few more details, meaning a few more government details but--oh my. The French claim to dislike bureaucracy and seem to ignore or openly flaunt authority whenever possible but that only causes the controlling authorities to hire more bureaucrats to enforce their edicts. The result is that we have passed through the private domains of many petty clerks that have invested a lot of their ego in directing the behavior of anyone in their lair. Ok, that part isn't so different even at home but what is surprising is how broadly this practice has been implemented. At one department store we had to deal with five distinct and clearly guarded domains: first the sales clerk who wasn't there to help you find your item but only to fill out the slip of paper that you needed for the next rite of passage (I don't think anyone at that store was in charge of helping the customer.) Each section of the store had a separate sales clerk so don't even consider asking the young women at the electronics counter to help you with houseware. Once having satisfied the proper sales clerk that you really knew what you wanted to buy, you are now worthy to pay for the item and obtain permission (conveniently printed in quadruplicate) to pursue collecting the actual item. Standing in another line with your properly printed form which has been stamped "paid" allows you to request that another clerk check go see if your item is available (I don't know what happens if it isn't) and he graciously separates your quadruplicate form: one he keeps, one he hands to a runner who disappears into the warehouse to retrieve the chosen item, one is returned to you and the last...I don't know who exactly gets the last one. If any of the above dignitaries happen to be away from their station for any reason I'm pretty sure everyone else is required to simply wait until lunch is over or the phone call to his girlfriend is finished. No one would dare to violate the sanctity of anyone else's domain.
Back to the
Government. After having waited for a couple
of hours with our assigned number we passed our interview because my
wife was armed with some
five pounds of paper that had been requested by previous
bureaucrats. We were thanked, given a temporary Carte de Sejour
and sent on our way. The permanent carte requires a physical exam
so we got an appointment and headed for an unmarked secret location
where all the local Carte-de-Sejour-physical-exam-officials are
hidden. Several interviews and a chest x-ray later, we were
worthy
of paying some 200 Euros each. Ah, but not so fast. One can
not simply pay a French government agency. You must first obtain
the appropriate "stamp". This practice must be some kind of
leftover from
times when higher level government officials distrusted their
underlings and so came up with separate stamps for each bureau to make
sure nobody was skimming off the top or spending the wrong funds.
That's all fine except that
by the time we found the place to buy the proper stamp, it was
closed. By the way, one must make sure that the stamp purchased
is of the right flavor and don't loose it because they are not
refundable. My father-in-law still has some fifty euros worth of
French government stamps that the French government won't accept
because they are for an expense that he hasn't yet encountered.